Reinventing Brazil
New Readings and Renewal in
the Narratives of Irish Travellers *

Laura P.Z. Izarra
University of São Paulo

Translated by Peter O’Neill and Gloria Karam Delbim

Marion McMurrough, Between the Amazon and Andes; or Ten Years of a Lady’s
Travels in
the Pampas, Gran Chaco, Paraguay and Mato Grosso
(London: E. Stanford, 1881).

Brazil is a geographical area that
exerts great fascination in the global context of the history
of the movement of people. 'A giant by its very nature,' the
character of Brazil's people, and the image of its natural
wealth, unity and security have for many centuries inspired
the imagination of foreigners coming from different corners of
the world to fulfil their dreams in these tropical lands. Its
territory transforms itself into a 'diaspora space'
[1] where
the immigrants, who had been part of the most diverse type of
diasporas, interact with individuals who are represented as a
generous and hospitable people. Marilena Chauí in Brazil,
Founding Myth and Authoritarian Society, demolishes the
internal image of a nation with a unique and indivisible
identity, with peaceful and orderly inhabitants, who are happy
and hard-working. She delves deep into the heart of these
representations that reactivate the founding myth that
propagates itself continually, and unmasks the paradoxes that
make up the identity of the Brazilian people. Chauí affirms
that 'the founding myth offers an initial repertoire of
representations of reality and, at each moment of historical
formation, these elements are reorganised not only from the
point of view of the internal hierarchy (that is, what is the
main element that commands the others), but also from the
enlarging of its meaning (that is, new elements come to add to
the primitive meaning)' (10). Keeping this in mind, how do
the narratives of foreign travellers and immigrants interpret
and reinvent these representations produced for the founding
myth, and how do they adjust to historical moments and
ideologies that contribute to transnational displacements?
What images of Brazil do they construct, why, and how do they
circulate?

The aim of this essay is to
analyse the images of the founding myth present in the
narratives of Irish travellers at the end of the nineteenth
century in comparison with the images at the end of the
twentieth century constructed by the Irish poet Paul Durcan on
his visit to Brazil in 1995. The question arises as to why one
should focus on Irish stories and not English stories in
general, since the former had dissolved in the language of the
latter after more than ten centuries of English domination.
When analysing the founding myth, Chauí points to the medieval
writings that, on a symbolic level, had consecrated a powerful
myth in the history of the great sea voyages, 'the so called
Fortunate Islands, promised land, or blessed place, where
perpetual spring and eternal youth reign, and where man and
animals coexist in peace' (59), according to the Phoenician
and Irish traditions. Braaz, as designated by the
Phoenicians, or Hy Brazil as designated by Irish monks,
appears on fourteenth- and fifteenth-century maps as an island
divided by a great river, Insulla de Brazil or Isola
de Brazil, to the west of Ireland and south of the Azores.

The mention of the Irish origin of
the name of Brazil was the subject of a lecture written by
Irish diplomat Roger Casement when he was British consul in
Belém do Pará in 1907. [2] The text starts with an exposition
of the sublime nature of the name Brazil, 'probably the
sweetest sounding name that any large race of the Earth
possesses' (22), but affirms that he only became interested in
its origin after he disembarked in Santos as Consul in 1906.
By refuting the theory that Brazil had received its name as a
result of the abundance of red dye-wood (Brazil wood or Pau-brazil),
which soon after the discovery of Brazil became a constituent
part of the opening of new markets to European mercantile
capitalism, Casement tried to demonstrate how, at that time,
every concept associated with Ireland was 'wiped out.' This
was due to the preconception generated in the eyes of England
of a dominated people, namely, 'a race of senior barbarians
liv[ing] in squalid misery without parallel in civilization'
(24). He was subsequently to recognise the negative dimension
of the direct or indirect participation of Great Britain in
the violations committed in Africa and South America, as
denounced later in his diaries, and he would eventually rebel
against that power, being condemned to death for his
participation in the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916.

On the other hand, his writings
reveal the elements that contributed to the celebratory image
of Brazil. Casement confirmed that Ireland 'was the home of
the legend which for centuries had turned men's minds westward
in search of that fabled land':

Brazil owes her name to Ireland –
to Irish thought and legend – born beyond the dawn of history
yet handed down in a hundred forms of narrative and poem and
translated throughout all western Europe, until all western
Europe knew and dreamed and loved the story, and her
cartographers assigned it place upon their universal maps.
(28-29).

The land 'beyond the sea' was to
inspire, in various political contexts, utopian thoughts,
especially among those who had suffered the effects of the
potato famine and British direct rule in the middle of the
nineteenth century. That historical period witnesses the
scattering of the Irish Diaspora to English-speaking countries
such as the United States, Canada and Australia, the
destinations of the majority of those emigrants. However, a
smaller number of Irish people, inspired by travel stories and
letters from those who had established themselves south of the
equator, set off for South America where they had to live
side-by-side with other cultures and face the challenge of
learning their languages. Some emigrants had probably chosen
tropical lands as their destination because the rumours
rekindled imagery that had been incorporated into the folklore
memory of the Irish people, i.e., the legendary myth of Hy
Brazil that was associated with holiness and an original
Garden of the Eden. Nevertheless, the largest group of this
second migratory wave settled in Argentina where they formed a
politically, religiously and economically united community,
and established their own means of communication, which they
consolidated, as for example in the case of the newspapers,
The Standard (1861-1959), The Southern Cross (1875
up to the present day), Fianna (1910-1912), and The
Hibernian-Argentine Review (1906-1927). In Brazil though,
there are some records of Irish immigrants prior to 1827. It
was on that date that 2,686 Irish people from counties Cork
and Waterford, including women and children, were transported
to Rio de Janeiro as mercenary soldiers under the command of
an Irish officer, Colonel Cotter, to serve in the new
Brazilian imperial armada, and to fight in the war against
Argentina for the disputed lands that today form part of the
Republic of Uruguay (Basto 1971). Once the war was over, they
were supposed to remain on in order to work in the
countryside, where manpower was much needed. However, the
Brazilian government did not concede the reward as promised –
namely, accommodation, food, and land. Many were deported
after the failure of the military confrontation, and a bloody
riot that lasted three days, which was initiated by 200
soldiers of the Irish regiment unsatisfied with their
treatment by the government. One hundred families were sent to
Taperoá, State of Bahia, to form a colony know as Saint
Januária, while others were settled in an agricultural colony
in the State of Rio Grande do Sul, and some spread to the
states of Paraná and Santa Catarina.

Approximately four decades after
this frustrating experience, Irishman William Scully founded
the Anglo-Brazilian Times newspaper in Rio de Janeiro
(1865-1884), which became a vehicle for spreading a positive
image of Brazil in Ireland as the land that offered 'more
opportunities' than the other countries chosen by emigrants.
Scully negotiated with the government and promised the Irish
that they would receive their salaries immediately on landing
in Brazil, contrary to what had happened in the past. In his
letter to the clergy of Ireland in 1866,
[3] he asked them to
encourage farm workers to emigrate and compared the benefits
of the country to the situation in the United States. Scully
reinforced the myth of a paradisical climate as described in
medieval writings (the eternal spring) – that was more
moderate, 'the heat of summer never reaching the extremes' and
the winters resembling more an Irish summer, 'though somewhat
warmer to the north, and cooler in the south and interior,
where frosts occasionally occur'. He also affirmed that there
was religious tolerance, although Roman Catholicism was the
official religion, and he promoted justice and the spirit of
progress of the country.

Scully asserted that laws protecting the individual and
property were similar to Irish laws, and that immigrants could
become naturalised citizen after two years of residence,
compared to five in the United States. The editor of the
Anglo-Brazilian Times thus borrowed from the ideologies
that accompanied the historic movements in the formation of
the Brazilian nation. In addition to the celebration of
nature, the romantic nativism of the nineteenth century also
established the image of a peaceful people, with no racial or
religious discrimination. Scully described the type of people
the Irish would find in Brazil and wrote that they would
receive much affection and kindness, demonstrated in various
forms 'as in their native land', and that they would
experience 'nothing of the unconcealed contempt which the
native American is apt to show 'raw' Irishmen, until five
years residence has entitled them to vote.' The elements that
constituted the founding myth became evident – the grandeur
of the country and opportunities for all, without prejudice
towards differences. According to Marilena Chauí, the idea of
the non-existence of prejudices was part of the effect
produced by Brazil-Nature, since this cover up was decisive in
the founding of the myth because 'the natural juridical way
of things, being a hierarchy of perfect acts and powers
desired by God, indicates that Nature is constituted by human
beings who naturally subordinate to each other' - a form of
voluntaryservitude (64-65). Also present is what
she called the sacredness of history, that made Brazil 'the
country of the future', guaranteed by the presence of an
ecclesiastic institution and religious tolerance.

* Text originally published in
Literaturas Estrangeiras
e o Brasil: Diálogos. Ed. Laura P.Z. Izarra. São Paulo: Associação
Humanitas/FAPESP, 2004. 159-176. Translated by Peter O’Neill and
Gloria Karam Delbim; revised by Laura Izarra. The lithographs are
reproduced with the permission of the Biblioteca do Instituto de
Estudos Brasileiros, Universidade de São Paulo. In: Mulhall, Marion
McMurrough. Between the Amazon and Andes; or Ten Years of a Lady’s
Travels in the Pampas, Gran Chaco, Paraguay and Mato Grosso
(London: E. Stanford, 1881).